We recently connected with Destiny X and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Destiny thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Like most creatives; or maybe all children, I knew I wanted to pursue art when I was old enough to see how unhappy the adults around me seemed. Being a sensitive kid, taking in the world around you, you kind of internalize the things you see. The more I saw, the more confused I was. If everyone is unhappy doing things they don’t want to do, they should be happy doing things they like to do. “Well, nothing is easy and nothing is fair. That’s life,” my dad would say. And I knew what his life was like, so I believed him; but I’m stubborn, so I didn’t agree. My mom was always telling me I needed to grow a ‘thicker skin’ that I spent years waiting to magically appear. In the meantime, I had observed and sternly concluded that society was a sham- so when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I just said happy.

I wasn’t really forced to flesh that idea out until I was like sixteen. And I say forced because I was very content with the idea that I could just move to the woods or exist in the fringes of society. My parents sat me down and asked if I’d thought about college, if I’d thought about what I wanted to do for a job. And I truly, one-hundred percent, had not thought about it once. Like, I would day dream about what adult-me would be like, but never how said adult would pay her bills. And I had the first of now many moments where I realize, oh dang, I am part of this society. And people expect me to contribute something? To the world? Okay.

So I sat for a moment, weighing my options. And I must have been taking too long because my mom started rattling off several military branches and their varying benefits in a very weird tone, like she was offering me an apple that she secretly knew would detonate upon consumption. Realizing in that moment how terrified my parents must have actually been for my future, I spit out, ‘I’ll write’. And this familiar sentiment entered the room, momentarily neutralizing our fears. Compromise. I was beginning to know her well. And it was perfect, I thought to myself, because writing didn’t sound nearly as stupid as singing.

Destiny , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Destiny and I make music under the name destiny X. Music has always been the one thing that I just ‘get’. It makes sense to me. I’ve been singing since I was a child; church and school choir, and started writing songs around 7 or 8. My mom entered me into countless talent shows and searches, in an effort to see how serious I was. We all learned that I had a certain, overwhelming crippling stage fright, that did not translate well to audiences. It was not improved by immersive practice, almost fortifying out of pure spite every time someone asked me to sing in public for strangers. Music felt like it was mine. I continued making music privately, and kept this extremely misguided notion tucked in the back of my head that if I was meant to do it, to be a singer, that it would just happen. I really don’t know, I blame television.

I auditioned for a performing arts high school and was accepted into the Vocal department. After the first year I knew that if I wanted to stay in love with singing, I had to switch departments. I enjoyed theory and technique classes, but I was beginning to learn just how effective bureaucracy is at shooting the legs off of anything even resembling joy. Dramatic, but, every time I entered the doorway to the building, I felt there was a tiny part of my soul that stayed back on the sidewalk in protest. I hated school, and I really didn’t want to bring music into that. I don’t even know if it was school that I hated, or the building itself, the walls, filing us into sloppy lines and herding us like cattle. I found it oppressive. My aversion to control was better suited for the creative writing department, where I discovered a love of poetry and prose. This compromise gifted me a new perspective, a new medium, and early admission into an art & design college in the desert that no longer exists and I still owe money to.

I finally began recording and releasing music on Soundcloud in 2015, because I started dating a producer/engineer. So, while it wasn’t in the form of a mysterious label executive randomly plucking me from obscurity and giving me a music career like I imagined when I was 11, it did kind of just happen. Except, it was just me, in my first apartment, making music. I was ‘doing it’ and I didn’t even really know. Close friends would say things like ‘It’s so cool you’re pursuing music now’. That feeling would come up, where I’m like oh, am I pursuing something? Am I a professional musician now? No one even knows me. Is this my career? I was just doing the thing that I truly like to do. The thing that I don’t have to think about while I’m doing it. Being aware of perception is daunting, and has this dangerous potential to obscure motivation. If people see me as this artist now, what does that mean? What action does that now call for? And i think it means different things for different people.

For me, it took a while to reconcile with the child in me who decided that music was too sacred to be commodified. Once it became a job, I would have to be good at it, and it wouldn’t be fun. Or, if I really tried, then I could really fail. The same way I wanted to separate music and school, like church and state. I had survived so long without losing my mind because I was compartmentalizing all the things I felt didn’t go together. All of this because someone said ‘it’s so cool you’re pursuing music now’. Is there a name for whatever I have? Life is weird and scary- whether you follow your dreams, compromise, or abandon them. I’m proud of not abandoning mine. I think it’s important for others, artists, just humans, to find that thing that lets you forget you’re being perceived and constantly remind yourself why you love it. The main things I want potential listeners to know about my work is that it comes from the most earnest part of me, it historically has been recorded in my room, and I can’t wait to keep growing in and sharing my art.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is expressing something very human, and someone hearing it and it really resonating with them. And I don’t mean just, when someone likes your work. It doesn’t happen every time. But it’s more likely when an artist, any kind, really takes a risk on an idea. Or bares an undeniable truth. It mirrors or challenges the audience. There’s a closeness you feel when a song speaks to you, and I don’t really like talking so it’s quite efficient. Art is subjective so everything doesn’t speak to everyone. So when you stumble upon something that is striking to you, it’s like you’ve entered into a dialogue with the artist. That, is very rewarding- finding people who speak your language is very rewarding.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My creative journey has been driven by an attempt to understand our human condition. I continue to have a lot of questions about the world around me, how we react to it, and each other. As I continue to grow as an artist these are questions I want to, if not answer, at least ask in my music. Not existential dread but perhaps existential wonder.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/destiny.ex
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/destiny-xxx
• Other: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/destiny-x/370305478

Image Credits

First 3 photos: Naomieh Jovin
Last 2 photos: Shaughn Cooper